Google is now showing 360 degree street level views.

Google is now showing 360 degree street level views. It’s great from the perspective of showing people exactly how a particular location looks. However, the problem is that it is showing individual recognizable people. I’m not sure how Google is able to do this. I’m not an attorney so I don’t know the exact laws. However, most things I read indicate that you need to have a model release any time you publish a photograph of a recognizable person or persons.

For our travel and location websites, we Photoshop out any recognizable individuals and private vehicles in front of residences just to be safe and to protect the privacy of those individuals. (ie, the red sports car in front of the historic Victorian house might not belong to one of the owners of that house)..

Right now, the odds of you showing up on one of these pictures is infintesimally low. It’s even lower that you would have something embarrassing such as being photographed in front of a strip club. However, as Google and other companies constantly expand and add an ever increasing amount of photos, the odds start to increase.. “Hey, is that our mayor in front of the Alchoholic’s Anon building?” “Doesn’t that look like our neighbor’s daughter coming out of the Planned Parenthood building?”

There are some possible solutions. You don’t have to photoshop things to make the people invisible. This would be a great overseas outsourcing opportunity.. All someone would have to do is take the photo and apply a small blur or pixelate to each picture.. Sure it would cost a little per pic but balance that against a pic of you in your birthday suit reaching out to get the morning paper…

Scenes Through the Eye of Google – The Lede – Breaking News – New York Times Blog: “Even so, privacy concerns are starting to spread like wildfire. The Drudge Report, that early-warning system for democracy, is now using a screencap of someone peering out of a living room window as his top image. If that didn’t scare you, the banner headline might: SMILE, YOU’RE ON GOOGLE EARTH!CNET tells the story of one fellow who was caught smoking on a competing service from Amazon, revealing a secret he would like to have kept from his family. That service has shut down.”

Scenes Through the Eye of Google – The Lede – Breaking News – New York Times Blog: “Even so, privacy concerns are starting to spread like wildfire. The Drudge Report, that early-warning system for democracy, is now using a screencap of someone peering out of a living room window as his top image. If that didn’t scare you, the banner headline might: SMILE, YOU’RE ON GOOGLE EARTH!CNET tells the story of one fellow who was caught smoking on a competing service from Amazon, revealing a secret he would like to have kept from his family. That service has shut down.”

UPDATE – DEC 2017 – It’s hard to believe that Google Street Views has been around for over 10 years. It has turned out to be a fascinating tool